I know how touched you all were, as were we with the story of Ray, my avatar kitty. We adopted him from a campground in the N Ga mtns in Feb of this year. After a bit of doctoring him up (which I *thought* he'd forgiven us for), we set out for our current trip to the NE and Canada. We're about half way thru it and stopped to celebrate the 4th in Burlington VT at a municipal camp ground on Lake Champlaign.

2 mornings ago, Ray raced out of the van door and hasn't been seen since. We have activated his chip notice, so if someone takes him to a shelter or a vet, it will trigger a phone call to our cell phones. I have emailed a picture of him and the notification of his loss to the local humane society shelter. Because of the holiday and the circumstances (we had to leave the cg for 1 nite as they were full) and he tends to return late at nite, we are hopeful he will return tonite.

The CG is emptying out and I don't think there will be so many people around tonite so we are really thinking he might come back to us in the next night or 2. We will stay here looking for him until the 7 th and then just have to hope he will show up somewhere that will check his chip.

He really wormed his way into our hearts at once and it's hard to know how big a hole we'll feel if in fact we don't get him back. Right now we are still at the hopeful stage and it's good to know that there are 2 CG Kitties so we don't think there are coyotes or other predators around. Still he usually doesn't like to miss meals and while we do know he can slip a harness (he did it in Canada with all his ID on it!) we did have a replacement figure 8 harness on him so are concerned about him getting hung up somewhere.

I'm not getting anything done other then waiting for him to come home.

If you can sit outside and talk in normal voices, especially late at night, that can provide an opportunity for him to return. Lost cats usually hide out and don't respond to calling. Lost cats also tend to come out really late at night (like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning) when everything is quiet. Talking in normal voices will cue a cat in to the fact that it might be safe to come out.

If you have anything with his scent on it (pillow bed or whatever), putting that outside your door can help too. Cats have extremely sensitive smell and tend to identify "home" with odors -- especially their own.

We went through this last month when I inadvertently locked our indoor cat outside. We searched the next day, but it wasn't until dusk when my dd and I were out on the screen porch talking about her that she finally showed up. I read about a dozen articles online about how to find a cat, and the best tips were the above -- night time, scent, and ordinary conversational voices.